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For parents already planning activities for chillier temps (and kids with cabin fever), Artisan's Asylum in Somerville has the perfect DIY project: a make-your-own marshmallow gun. For just a few bucks worth of PVC pipe and mini marshmallows, and in less than an hour of cutting & assembly, you can have a safe, family-friendly game that provides hours of indoor amusement. Find out how, after the jump.

Now an annual activity at the popular Fluff Fest, held recently in Somerville's Union Square, making marshmallow shooters was an idea that came to Artisan's Asylum co-founder Gui Cavalcanti back in 2010 after being asked to offer an appropriate activity for kids that involved engineering and marshmallows.

"[My old friend] Mike and I used to build these in high school and shoot ourselves in the eye with them," Cavalcanti said. "We were bored, geeky highschoolers in the middle of nowhere and had to go to Home Depot to create our own amusement. Now, the best part for me is getting to see the looks of glee on children's faces and the contrasting looks of anxiety on their parents'."

In the age of video games and iPads, the team at Artisan's Asylum gets really excited to see activities like the DIY marshmallow shooter table become such a popular part of events like Fluff Fest year after year — and we're sure they would be just as popular at any kid's birthday party or Saturday afternoon spent at home as a family.

"Kids get really excited about putting the shooter together themselves," said Molly Wenig Rubenstein, executive director for Artisan's Asylum. "We're helping those who want the satisfaction of using something they make themselves, who want to understand how the world around them is put together and how it works."